A post on SemiAccurate breaks down some information from PC Watch (translation) suggesting that Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs will be soldered to the motherboard, rather than socketed, a detail they have now confirmed with a pair of OEMs. They offer the distressed opinion that this will be a death knell to the desktop PC and the enthusiast market, and though they add that they've received information indicating there's a "good chance" that the Sky Lake processors that will follow Broadwell will be socketed for one or two generations to follow, they conclude: "By then the last remaining overclockers and experimenters on the PC front will be gone, and for good technical reasons." Thanks Ant via Slashdot.

Slick wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 15:35:isn't this better than having 400 kinds of toothpaste to choose from?

Nope.

well lucky for you there will be 400,000+ flavors of AMD cpu/mobo combinations.

me, i'll take the chip that's soldered right onto the mobo it was DESIGNED to work with. 10-15 flavors is fiiiine by me. has anyone ever REALLY cared about their particular brand of motherboard? that their asus RoG gives a whopping 0.3% better FPS in games??? NO! no one really cares! they're just brainwashed into thinking that choice is better, even when it hinders the actual performance of the product.

how is it that hard to envision a possibility where the manufacturer is making a decision which benefits it customers? are all corporations inherantly evil? Intel is OBVIOUSLY only being greedy, and not at all thinking of the you know, science of putting together computers. your xbox called, it misses you.

A 'leet militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear virtual arms shall not be infringed! -Cutter